Gaby
This is familiar to a lot of people. Sleep specialists say it’s perfectly normal to wake up at 3 or 4 a.m. In fact, most of us wake up not just once but several times during the night. So why does this happen?
Throughout the night we cycle through several stages of sleep. Each cycle starts with light sleep, moves into deeper slow-wave sleep, and then into the more active rapid eye movement (REM) phase. People often wake briefly as one cycle ends and another begins before falling back asleep.
The whole cycle lasts about four hours. So if you typically go to bed around 11 p.m. to midnight, expect a brief awakening about three hours later. Ideally these interruptions last only a few minutes. But if you fall into a negative thought spiral, you may find it hard to drift off again.
Stress isn’t necessarily the main cause of waking in the middle of the night, but it can turn those brief awakenings into torment. We also tend to be less rational in our nighttime thinking than during the day, so problems can feel much worse at 3 a.m., IFLScience reports.
Psychologist and cognitive therapist Greg Murray says this happens because we know there’s often nothing we can do about our problems at that hour. During the day we can act on challenges; at night all we can do is worry. That’s just how we’re wired.
Can you fight these distressing awakenings? Practice mindfulness meditation. When you wake up during the night, focus on your breathing or bodily sensations. That calms the mind and reduces anxiety and may help you fall back asleep quickly. If that doesn’t work, pick up a book to distract yourself from heavy thoughts, Murray says.
